Americans don’t understand numbers—especially when those numbers are fractions. You may know the true story about Arby’s customers who were convinced that a new ⅓-pound burgers contained less meat than the familiar ¼-pounder, since 4 is larger than 3. Maybe… Read More ›
Teaching & Learning
The town of Lincoln first participated in—and later rejected—this “radical experiment in integration.”
“Why do you want to mix our children with city blacks? We moved here to get away from that element.” So said a resident of Lincoln, Massachusetts. A white resident, needless to say. Shocking perhaps, but not surprising, even if… Read More ›
Chynah Tyler on igniting the passion of a new generation of voters.
Chynah Tyler, member of the Great and General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, more commonly known by its informal name, the Massachusetts State Legislature, has published a fine article in Commonwealth Magazine. You should read it—not just because Chynah… Read More ›
Q: Is AI forcing us to switch to project-based learning? A: Not really, but…
The newest moral panic, as I’m sure you’ve heard, has teachers and professors clutching their pearls about AI, specifically ChatGPT. A couple of weeks ago I proposed three solutions to this problem, but now I want to address three more… Read More ›
Making math relevant?
Good rhetorical question from SMBC: “Do kids ever look up from Minecraft or Pokemon cards or a Harry Potter book and say ‘This is boring because it’s not relevant to real life’?” And yet that’s exactly what too many kids… Read More ›
Is anyone still teaching cursive? Does anyone care?
“Niche scholarship and the blue-moon occasion do not justify a universal policy of childhood education,” observes John McWhorter. As you see, I’ve taken that observation out of context. Without context it’s hard to know what McWhorter means, so let’s unpack… Read More ›
Three ways to rescue writing assignments from the curse of AI
Following up on my post of December 16: the internet has been atwitter recently (no pun intended) with news about the first artificial intelligence that is likely to pass the Turing Test. (If you don’t know what that is, you… Read More ›
Fantastic ______s and Where to Find Them
This book reminds me of the caller who asked the Magliozzi brothers a question about his Volkswagen Quantum: he couldn’t get it repaired because he didn’t know any Quantum mechanics. What’s the connection? Well, first you need to know what… Read More ›
Answers for linguistics quiz
Six days ago I gave you a linguistics quiz that Lynne Murphy designed for the holiday season. The quiz is reprinted below so you don’t have to flip back and forth. Here are the answers, with annotations in some cases:… Read More ›
Hints for linguistics quiz
Four days ago I gave you a linguistics quiz that Lynne Murphy designed for the holiday season. The quiz is reprinted below so you don’t have to flip back and forth. Full answers will be posted on Tuesday. For the… Read More ›